Interdigitated Smectics: A New Family of Smectic Liquid Crystals

AbstractThe structure of a highly-ordered smectic-like phase is reported. The molecules are arranged in layers with their alkyl tails extending on both sides of the layers, and these tails are fully interdigitated with the tails of the molecules of the adjacent layers. On the basis of this structure and of a similarly interdigitated structure recently proposed by Diele et al. for a smectic A and smectic FS phase, it is suggested that there exists a whole family of interdigitated smectics in addition to the currently known smectic phases which may be called segregated smectics.